A visit home to Daytona this last weekend held the usual bag of castoff hidden gems; the mutations of the American Dream developed (without zoning enforcement). While in Justin Rancourt’s Coke Pit, I saw a photo album comprised of 4×6 inch drug store color glossy prints documenting the history of a client’s business: Aerial Advertising. Growing up surfing on the Atlantic coast, pretty much daily, even in the waning light of Daytona’s grungy tourist appeal, a small prop plane would buzz overhead, carting its blocky offers of all-you-can-eat pork, half priced bikinis, or in the case of this photo album, marriage proposals.

Of course I totally forgot to scan all of the pictures I wanted out of this album, but Justin was nice enough to send me a few. Often photographically decoupled from the airplane, ghostly, floating sentences hanging in the air, at once charged with the uppercase and aerial aggression of a god, but simultaneously here-and-then gone. Living in our civilization’s much harangued era of wireless communication, it is beautiful to see visualized these otherwise invisible transmissions in such a bulky, often loud way.

Perhaps in a few years, these dubiously certified prop plane pilots will be motoring around, broadcasting the same sort of messages to a radius of localized cell phone users, dropping their invisible payload at unsuspecting citizens.

Billboard giant Van Wagner certainly gives a compelling case for the technological underpinnings of their air media campaigns:

“Our custom designed rudder and tunneling systems aerodynamically position displays at the most opportune angles. They enable us to maximize visibility and showcase displays so they appear virtually wrinkle free. To ensure programs run as planned, we’ve equipped our entire fleet with state-of-the-art GPS devices to monitor campaigns. This enables us to provide precise, timely proof-of-performance reporting that can be tracked from desktop computers in real time.”

I wonder what the ideal flight corridor for dragging a 300 foot long sign that advertises “PUT YOUR FEET BACK ON THE STREET WWW.ALESTESBAILBONDS.COM”, and how that map visualization might look.

Maybe a 21st century poet will take up the charge, abandon his or her notebook for the skies, raining down up the masses one line charges hitting at the very core of human nature.